Samuel Arsenault-Brassard: Flame
ELLEPHANT VR artist and curator
Text by Samuel Arsenault-Brassard et Mylène Lachance-Paquin
From March 6 to 27, Samuel Arsenault-Brassard presents Flame, a long-term VR architectural project entitled “Galerie Lumière” which includes about fifteen pieces that will be unveiled over the next few years. Flame is the second VR piece in the series to be publicly unveiled and it contains a piece of hand-carved VR artwork to be created in 2020. Flame’s sculpture attempts to create a sense of grandeur, mystery and spatial sensuality through expressive complexity and acute realism.
Although they are digital, the pieces in the “Galerie Lumière” are all designed to showcase the “sunlight” of the digital world outside. Their main purpose is to provide soft, diffuse indirect sunlight to cover a sculpted work of art that is complex on all sides. Thanks to this technicality, it is then possible to simulate this very soft light in XR environments, creating a credible visual dream.
As early as 2014, while studying at university, Samuel began developing architectural projects using VR. According to him, the technology would bring immense value to digital environments. Now, digital spaces and art are no longer simply viewed from the outside; they can be inhabited and fully experienced by visitors. In addition, the architectural world of VR would become a social world from which a new and decentralized form of life emerges: the metaverse. More importantly, the use of these technologies would provide artists with a wealth of artistic freedom and power never before imagined.
